Archive for “Training Fitness” Tag

Fitness Programs For Kids

International superstar Speed Coach Lee Taft and I agree on almost everything related to training athletes.

Together, we have found through our combined 40 years of experience that these are the 3 most important factors to a successful speed training program –

Speed Key #1 – Create a Developmental System
Training for speed has to be developmental in nature.

With younger athletes (6 – 9 years old) training for speed is a matter of allowing kids to explore various aspects of movement from a self-learning perspective.

As a Coach or Trainer, your objective is to create games and drills that provide a broad-base of multi-directional movement (i.e. forward, backwards) as well as timing-oriented skills (i.e. skipping to a specific cadence).

It is important to resist the urge to ‘over-teach’ or ‘make perfect’ the way your youngsters are performing these skills.

Young nervous systems must be given the opportunity to learn through a trial and error process, what quality movement feels like.

With athletes 10 – 18, your training efforts can become much more teaching based and focus will shift to perfection of movement habits and eventually ‘drilling’ (i.e. repetitive sets of specific skills).

Do not be fooled into thinking that young athletes and more mature athletes can learn the skills associated with speed & agility in the same way, however.

A developmental system is necessary for optimal speed & agility training.